Page 31 of Fifty-Fifty

‘Nice building,’ said Levy.

‘It was almost condemned last year,’ said Kate.

‘Really, you could never tell. It looks so … historic,’ he said, struggling to say something complimentary. ‘I used to live in a place like this when I first moved to the city. All these apartments are the same around here. It would be great to take a look, relive my youth,’ he said, smiling with his little black eyes.

‘It’s a mess, Theo, sorry. I can’t have visitors to an untidy apartment,’ said Kate, gripping the door handle.

‘No need to be embarrassed. We know each other. We’re colleagues. We should probably get to know one another a lot better.’

Kate pulled the door handle, got out swiftly, turned and said, ‘Thanks for the ride,’ and shut the car door. She threw her bag on her shoulder and walked into the building as fast as she could, listening for the sound of the engine in Levy’s car – willing it to rev and for him to drive away – far away from her. The only sound in her ears was the beating of her heart and the idle chug of Levy’s car as it sat there, motionless.

She could feel his eyes on her.

Since that day, Kate had started bringing running shoes to work. At the end of the day, when Levy was going home, she waited at her desk, her shoulders tight

and frozen in dread.

‘You’re working too hard. Come on, I’ll give you a ride home. We might even grab a bite on the way. Do you like sushi? Wait, who am I kidding? Everyone likes sushi. I know a great place on—’

‘No, it’s okay, Theo. Thanks, but I’ve got my gear. I’m jogging home. Got to find the time to keep in shape these days,’ she said, reaching down to pick her running shoes out of her gym bag and then holding them aloft above her head as

proof of her intentions.

‘You don’t need to do that. You look in pretty good shape to me,’ he said.

That one almost made her puke.

Some nights Levy would persist, asking two or three times. Would she like a drink, or dinner? Levy said he’d been comped tickets for a Broadway show, or a

suite at the Four Seasons for a night – would she like to tag along?

Kate said no. Every time. It didn’t seem to matter. He would touch her shoulder, his fingers grazing the side of her neck, then sigh and leave. When he got into the elevator every night, Kate shuddered in pure relief, rolled her shoulders and felt the tension drain away.

In meetings he would often sit beside her, his hand slapping itself down on her knee or her thigh when he introduced her to clients or lawyers on the other side of a case. It felt wrong. It felt like he was staking a claim to her – making her his property.

Kate showered every night when she got home – not because she was sweating from a run – she never ran home. The gym stuff was simply an excuse.

She washed to get the smell of him off her, the corruption that she felt when he touched her. It was beginning to affect her health.

Lately she’d been having a lot of headaches. She knew it was tension – stress.

Not from the job, but from her boss. Fridays were the worst, when she carried files to his car for him, his eyes peeling away her clothes as he stood behind her in the elevator, her heart hammering, waiting for him to make some kind of move, or to touch her.

The more she avoided one-on-one meetings with Levy and made excuses not to go to dinners, the more frustrated he became. He criticized her work, under the guise of ‘feedback and mentorship,’ and Kate couldn’t help but notice the criticism was getting worse the more she turned down his advances.

She had thought about making a complaint, but she had never felt like he’d crossed the line into harassment, no matter how many times she read the harassment policy on the firm’s intranet. Sometimes he came close to stepping over it, and Kate knew it wasn’t about just one incident – that a course of conduct had to be proven, but how the hell could she prove that when most of the incidents happened when it was just the two of them alone? It would be Kate’s word against Levy’s. Besides, junior associates who complained about equity partners often ended up on the street, with no reference, which practically made them unemployable. Kate didn’t want that. She had worked too hard to get

here.

As she watched Levy and Scott walk away on Hogan Place, Levy’s rebuke ringing in her ears, Kate took the opposite direction – even though it was the wrong way – back to her apartment. First alleyway she saw, she ducked into the

shadow. There were no tears, but she felt like crying. The fluttering in her chest that became a cramp, tightening her breath, would not clear without Kate pushing that release valve and letting it all out. Crying is good for you. She knew this. She’d read enough self-help books, but it just wasn’t how Kate was made.

She couldn’t cry. Not anymore, not since that day. The valve was closed and locked, keeping all that emotion inside where it churned and churned. But a thought calmed her. Her heart rate fell, her breath slowed and deepened.

She wanted to go home. Not back to her apartment. Home.

Forty-five minutes later she stepped off the Edgewater Ferry, which she’d taken from midtown. When she was nine years old in Edgewater, New Jersey, she had played in the abandoned Kellogg factory with her childhood friend, Melissa Bloch. The factory was gone now, and in its place was a modern marina.